The Old Mythology

by Brian W. Aldiss


The seepers weebed down on the tall sides of every urbhive. Hundreds, thousands,
ceased their scootering  to gaze upwards  in delight, envy  or catatonia at  the
radiant female face glowing on  their windowfree walls. The entire  urbstack was
alight with  the eyes,  the pert  nose, the  pink gums  and immaculate  teeth of
DoraDeen Englaston.

She spoke.

'Soon I will become Day  - just plain Day! I  am just so excited because  of all
this and this luck that has just happened  to me. Here we are on the very  first
day of the wonderful twenty-second century and I have won - lucky me! - the just
first prize in the competition.

'My  prize is  that I  just get  to be  projected on  the TDP,  the  fantabulous
Temporal Displacement Projector - wow!'

Zoom zoom, went the  mecheye until it was  almost lost between those  tender red
lips, cosying up to the epic epiglottis.

'The TDP is just  going to send me  back to any place  in time I choose,  when I
will wind up  in the character  of a chosen  person of the  chosen period. Isn't
that just cute? The machine is switching on right now.'

DoraDeen had been an actor in a supersoap. There was hardly a sincere bone  left
in her body. That body now began to writhe as the TDP gained power.

'Golly gosh, it  feels so strange.  I'm definitely on  my way now...'  The event
horizons of past time  fluttered past her. 'Oh  yes... Why, there just  goes the
British  Empire.  And... golly  gosh,  the Romans!  Greece!  Who are  they?  The
Cythians? Never heard ofCythians...'

Her voice was fainter now, her image on the urbstack walls smaller.

'Oh, am I glad to escape the horrors of my own century - the commercialism,  the
shootings, the hair dyes, the drugs -  and above all else, just the miseries  of
family life. Wow, that's why I'm going back to the Eolithic, when the world  was
new, before we weebed at all.

'I want to belong to an ordinary decent Stone-Age family, with a kind father and
lots of affectionate siblings. There's a new just horizon ahead... bounding with
love and simple old-fashioned family values...'

DoraDeen's voice faded. Below, scooting resumed.


All about stretched a great forest. No man could tell where lay its limits.  The
great trees ran until, rank on rank, they reached the oceans.

Here and there  small communities had  been established. In  one community, pigs
rooted and grunted, tied by their legs to stakes. Their lives were as frugal  as
those of their human captors. They chuntered their dislike of domesticity.

Where once  this clearing  stood is  now a  place of  highways sweeping into the
distance, filling stations  and gigantic urbstacks.  The butterflies have  gone,
together with  the little  blue-eyed flowers.  Much has  changed -  but not  the
family life that DoraDeen craved.


Harmon preened himself in preparation for the feast. His sons had announced this
feast to be a celebration of his power. He trimmed his whiskers with the edge of
a shell. He anointed his shoulders with oil crushed from a rare herb. He secured
a bright feather in his hair. He put on a new gown, tying it so that it  covered
his stomach and lower regions. He looked every inch a lord.

Then he set forth, walking stiffly.

Clouds loomed overhead. The day was as yet hardly spent. The Sun God had  spread
layers of  mist to  hang close  to the  ground. The  mists curled away as Harmon
progressed  through them  towards the  meeting ground.  Constant bird  song  was
interrupted by a distant bugle note.

In the clearing, a wooden throne had been erected. Harmon's three daughters were
taking  up positions  by the  throne, decoratively  on either  side of  it.  The
daughters were young and scantily clad. In the elaborately dressed hair of their
heads they wore orange flowers, and in the hair upon their mounds of Venus,  one
wore small blue flowers  and the second small  red flowers. And the  third, Day,
wore a sprig of laurel in the vital places.

The dark  daughter was  by name  Via, the  fair one  Roa. They beckoned to their
father  with  formal  waves  of  their hands.  So  did  brunette  Day,  a little
uncertainly, for she had once been DoraDeen, so long ago it seemed like a  fairy
tale.

Harmon paused. Scenting danger, he gripped more firmly the staff he carried.  He
looked about him, moving his old shaggy head from side to side. There seemed  no
reason for alarm.

Slowly, he approached the throne. His  kissed first Roa, then Via, then  Day, on
their cheeks. The girls expressed no emotion; only Day thought to herself, 'This
is just fun! Wow, back in the Stone Age with my new sisters! I'm already getting
into character.' They  inclined their faces  to receive his  prickly old kisses.
Harmon gathered  the folds  of his  robe about  him, and  seated himself  on the
throne -which until recently had been a log. The bugle note sounded again.

He spoke  with a  hint of  impatience to  his daughters.  'Where is the feast to
which  my sons  invited me?'  'Wait a  little. Father,'  said Roa.  'Try to   be
patient.'  'You  will  soon  get  all  you  deserve,  Father,'  said  Via. 'Just
something's bound to happen,' thought Day. She gave a little wriggle.

From different parts of the great forest, three youths emerged. They carried  in
outstretched arms before them, in the gesture of those bearing gifts, a sword, a
dagger and an axe.

He who carried the sword was by name Woundrel. He who carried the dagger was  by
name Cedred. He  who carried the  axe was by  name Aledref. Aledref,  Cedred and
Woundrel came  dressed only  in loin-skirts,  with horned  black leather caps on
their heads. Aledref  carried a bugle  slung over one  shoulder. These were  the
sons of Harmon, young, ferocious, alert.

They approached their father.  Their weapons they laid  by their own feet.  They
bowed to Harmon, who received them with courtesy.

'So, my sons, I greet you warmly,' growled Harmon, looking more displeased  than
his  words might  suggest, 'although  you are  late. What  is this  ceremony?  I
expected to be feted here by feasting, by food and flagons of wine. Why bring me
weapons when  I wish  for a  young virgin?  Why bring  me such  faces as  yours,
wearing mirthless expressions?'

'We come to kill you, Father,' said Aledref.

'Our weapons are for death, not celebration,' said Cedred.

'But first we will hear what you have to say,' said Woundrel.

'Say? I've nothing  to say!' roared  Harmon. 'Don't you  dare speak of  killing!
I've always been  a good father  to you. And  to the girls.  Fed you. Wiped your
dirty little bottoms when you were babies. Carried you on my back when you  were
toddlers. Let you swarm all over me.  Taught you how to run, how to  fight. Told
you stories of my own youth, how I killed that dragon.'

Cedred said, 'Ah, you never killed no dragon. You made that up.'

'Son, you don't know what naked courage means. By Jarl, what a life you led  me,
what a damned nuisance you were! Spoiling my sleep, ruining my siestas, wrecking
my love life. Even when I had managed to get your mother down on her back and-'

'We don't want to hear,' shouted Aledref.

Harmon pointed a quivering finger at  him. 'Oh, you can smirk, Aledref,  but you
were the worst. A stupid, arrogant kid! Yet I sacrificed years to your welfare.'

Aledref spoke with chill in his voice.  'Our complaint is not with what you  did
or did not do. Father, but with what you are.'

'Oh? And what am I exactly, in your thick-headed estimation?'

Cedred answered, his voice as cold as his elder brother's. 'You are a nonentity.
Father. That's what we most resent. That's why we are about to kill you.'

'Me? A nonentity? Why you fool, I'm the source of your life. I'm known all about
for my  martial skills.  Do I  not laugh,  weep, bleed,  pee with some force and
splendour, and many other  things? A non- What?  I never heard such  nonsense. I
wouldn't think you three added up  to much, either! Didn't I invent  that flying
machine?'

'It crashed, Father,' said Aledref.

'Only because you did not flap the wings rapidly enough.'

'That's enough  talk. Father,'  Cedred said,  glancing at  Aledref for approval.
'You're full of bluster as usual. Now it's time to kill you.'

Woundrel intervened, saying, 'Let Father make a last - sacrifice to the Sun  God
before he dies.'

'Bugger the Sun God,' roared Harmon.  'I'll knock your blocks off with  my staff
if you dare come near me.' Turning to his daughters, Via, Roa and Day, he  said,
'What do  you think  your poor  dead mother  would say  if she  could hear these
impertinences, girls?'

Via laughed. 'Oh, she'd say "Like father, like sons", I imagine.'

'You've always made light of things,  you little bitch,' said Harmon. He  turned
to Roa. 'Have you got  a good word for me,  Roa, dear? You know how  I've always
loved you the best of the lot.'

'Really, Dad? Yet you  forgot my birthdays. You  were always away when  I wanted
you, wouldn't come near me when I was ill...'

'You were always a sickly little creature.'

'Sickly? I was undernourished. You  have always given precedence to  these three
greedy pigs of boys, made me wait  on them and clean up after them,  although it
must have been  obvious even to  you that I  was far more  intelligent than they
were. Who was it  who first thought of  cooking and flavouring meat  with herbs?
Why, me, of course!'

'Mother  had the  idea for  the herbs,'  said Day,  quietly, and   congratulated
herself for having slipped in the remark.

'Mother!' exclaimed Roa with disgust. 'Mother - what did she ever do? A  useless
bit of goods. Personally, Father, I think you chose to mate with her because she
was so stupid... You really really needed someone who was more stupid than  you.
No wonder your sons turned out to be such morons.'

'Look who's talking!' exclaimed Aledref. 'Who accidentally sat on a python?  Who
invented dresses? Who fell in  the stream and had to  be rescued when she was  a
girl?'

Roa retorted angrily, 'I fell in because you deliberately let go of my hand as I
was leaning over the river bank. And  what was I doing? Trying to teach  you how
to tickle a trout! But no, you and those stupid, moronic brothers of yours could
not learn the art, just as you've never learnt to fish with a line. As for-'

'Stop it!'  roared Harmon.  'Shut up  this instant,  all of  you! You're  always
bickering. You always bickered. You always will bicker. You're all a pain in  my
neck.  Between you,  you've made  my life  miserable. I've  never married  again
because you lot were always around.'

So the  argument continued.  The Sun  God rose,  pale and  etiolated, while  the
family brought up old  grudges and rehearsed them.  Once silence fell, when  the
children  of  Harmon lay  in  the damp  grass,  trying to  remember  other older
grievances.

Harmon it was who, leaning on his staff, arose, sighing deeply and brushing dirt
from his robe.

'Well, old as I  am, I'm off. I'm  going to leave you  to your own devices.  I'm
going to enjoy a real life in my declining years.'

Aledref picked up  the axe which  had lain at  his feet throughout  the morning.
'You don't escape  from us that  easily, Father. You'd  always be hanging  about
somewhere, trying to mess up our lives. Not no more! Are you ready, boys?'

Woundrel held up a hand. 'No, let's not be too hasty, Aledref. I mean, when  you
think of it, there's something in what Father says about our always bickering. I
wondered-'

'But we're not always bickering,' Cedred exclaimed. 'You're the one who bickers.
When did I bicker? I always keep my trap shut, otherwise Aledref hits me.'

'I haven't hit you for years!'

'But you are a bit of a thug, let's face it.'

'I'm not. I'm your protector. Who fought off that baboon last week?'

'I was trying to make a pet of it.'

'Oh, Jarl!  You two  creeps!' exclaimed  Woundrel, breaking  into this dialogue.
'Roa is right. We  certainly behave like morons.  Roa is more intelligent  - and
certainly nicer looking.'

Roa  blew Woundrel  a kiss.  'Come to  bed with  me again  tonight, my   darling
brother!' she called.

'Right, that's enough!' said Harmon. 'I declare the meeting closed. It's getting
near lunchtime. Let's go. Via, prepare us something simple. Don't go to too much
trouble. No more of that iguana with larks thrust down its throat. And let's all
have  a  pleasant afternoon.  You  could go  down  by the  river  bank, with  no
bickering, all friendly together.'

At his words, Aledref  immediately seized his axe,  and Cedred his dagger.  'You
don't get away like that. We're going to kill you, you nonentity! Right now!'

Via jumped  forward, waving  her hands  in distress.  She stood  in front of her
father, confronting her  brothers. 'Wait! I  know perhaps Father  deserves to be
killed for all the awful things he  has done, and for the good things  he failed
to do - like, at least in my case, educating me. But you might have the goodness
to kill him honestly. Forget all this nonentity business. We're all nonentities.
Oh yes, we are, Aledref - or else why would we still be living in this miserable
forest? Why have I got no decent flowers to stick in my hair?'

'We are a bit primitive,' said Day, laughing nervously. The others ignored her.

'Jarl, how the girl  goes on!' exclaimed Aledref,  sneering at Via. 'Get  out of
the way, darling, or you may be killed too.'

'If you wish to come back into my  bed tonight, you had better listen to what  I
have to say,' Via told him.

Flaunting  her  hips,  she   walked  over  to  her   father,  and  put  an   arm
condescendingly on his  shoulder. 'Father, these  silly boys are  unable to tell
you why they are about to kill  you; their powers of analysis are limited.  So I
will tell you. The truth is that whatever they do, they feel themselves  stifled
by your presence. They can't have a mature life until you have gone. You may  or
may not be a nonentity, but it is your life, your being on Earth, which  stifles
their existence.'

Harmon had cowered on his improvised throne before his sons' threats. Now he had
collected himself. He answered his daughter calmly, in a quiet voice. 'No,  that
is not  the truth  of the  matter. I  do not  stifle their  lives. This "feeling
stifled" is an expression of their own inadequacy. It has little to do with  me.
In fact I  am their hope,  your hope -  Aledref's, Cedred's, Woundrel's,  Roa's,
Day's and yours, my dear good Via. Because when I am transfixed by the Sun God's
arrows, when I am gone  from this world into the  arms of the Sun God,  then you
will find that his gaze will be fixed on you. You will be the next generation to
depart. As long as I am  here, walking about, boozing, sweating, chasing  women,
swearing, shitting -  whatever it is  you most dislike  about me -  you can feel
safe. Once I'm gone - well, those golden arrows will be aimed at your  miserable
selfish hearts.'

A silence fell as his words sunk in. Even Aledref turned his fierce gaze to  the
ground, as he attempted to think. It  was as if he already felt that  golden bow
drawn and that arrow which brought death turned in the direction of his vitals.

Day gathered courage to speak. 'We can't just kill Pa just like that. There  has
to be a  proper trial. Besides,  what would Mother  think of us?  You know, it's
possible she is watching us from - well, just from another sphere. Maybe she  is
looking down on  us even now...  I have a  theory that she  simply turned into a
deer and just ran off into the forest.'

Roa laughed scornfully. "Turned into a hippo, more like!'

But Day would not be deflected. She told them that there was a spiritual  aspect
to all of what she called 'the  silly talk of killing'. She told them  that they
must realise that  their father, if  just murdered, might  become an even  worse
threat to their well-being and his ghost return-to haunt them. Maybe the  ghost,
she said, would poison the water hole, or infest just the hut with cockroaches.

Woundrel  told  her loftily  that  cockroaches had  yet  to evolve.  The  things
crawling about were trilobites. He stamped on one as it went past.

It  seemed to  Day that  there were  certain conditions  here she  might  easily
improve. While they were on the subject  of housing, she said, it was just  very
unhealthy to have a wood fire in the middle of the hut. It was smoky and smoking
was bad for them. She rounded on her brothers, asking them why they just did not
build a stove and a chimney, instead of lying around all day.

"We're tired,' said Cedred. "It's the malnutrition.'

'I can't quite visualise a chimney,' said Woundrel.

'I'm thinking of getting married,' said Aledref.

Harmon was thoughtfully regarding his toes. 'I have never married again. You lot
were always hanging around  with your miserable disparaging  remarks. Bickering,
always bickering. Now I'm going to  leave you to your own devices.  My declining
years are to be spent in real independence.'

'Oh dear, oh golly gosh!' exclaimed Day. 'Are you always so cruel to each other?
It makes the twenty-second  century seem just nice.  How do I get  back there, I
wonder?'

Via clouted her for talking nonsense. Day burst into tears, which served to make
the others laugh.

'Well, I've had my say. Now I'm off,' said Harmon, with a sigh, as he rose  from
his seat.

Aledref barred his way. He said that  as long as his father was alive,  he would
always be somewhere in the  neighbourhood, making them feel inferior.  He turned
to his brothers, to run a finger suggestively across his throat.

Woundrel told him to wait, claiming that there was, after all, something in what
their father said about them always bickering.

Cedred denied  they were  always bickering.  'In any  case, you're  the one  who
bickers.'

'When did  I ever  bicker?' Woundrel  asked, angrily.  'If I  don't keep my trap
shut, Aledref hits me.'

Aledref  denied it.  He had  not hit  Woundrel in  years. Cedred  told him  that
nevertheless he was a thug.

Aledref denied that too. Had he  not been Cedred's protector? He had  fought off
the baboon attacking Cedred only a week ago.

'You scared it off, yes,'  said Cedred. 'But I was  trying to make a pet  of it.
You're always interfering in my life.'

Woundrel was lying on his back, trying  to make a daisy chain with his  feet and
toes. He glanced scornfully at his brothers. 'You two creeps are always  yakking
on. Roa was right when she said we were morons. We certainly behave like morons.
Roa is much  more intelligent than  we will ever  be. Besides which,  she smells
nicer and is nicer looking.'

Roa  blew  Woundrel a  kiss  and invited  him  to come  into  her bed  again  at
nightfall.

'Didn't we  go through  all this  before?' asked  Day, uneasily.  Their memories
seemed alarmingly short.

Harmon clapped his  hands and declared  the meeting closed.  Turning to Day,  he
ordered her to go and prepare the sort of delicacy he had been hoping for,  such
as baked lizard with thrushes stuffed down its throat. Day recoiled at the  mere
suggestion. She blew her nose on a leaf.

As Harmon rose, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, Aledref picked  up
his axe  and Cedred  his dagger.  They advanced  on their  father, calling him a
nonentity and saying they were about to strike. Via moved protectively in  front
of him.

'Wait!' she  said. 'I  know Father  deserves all  he gets.  Not only for the bad
things he has done but for the good things he failed to do, such as not teaching
me astronomy or giving  me an education. I've  no idea what twice  two could be!
But after all, we are nonentities ourselves, the very dregs of evolution.'

'Oh, that's just not true,' Day interposed. 'At least, I don't think it's  true.
I'd guess you are homo erectus. Perhaps that was a blind just alley...'

'Don't talk rubbish,' said Aledref, pushing  her aside. 'I don't know about  you
girls but  I've evolved  from an  ape, a  higher ape.  Out of  the way, kids, or
you'll get yourselves killed.'

Via kicked him in the shin. 'You'd better listen to me if you want to come  into
my bed tonight. So shut up!'  She turned to her father, doing  creepy movements,
with hands outspread on either side of her head, to hold his attention.

'Father, these stupid boys of yours dare  not let on about the real reasons  why
they want to kill you,  so I will tell you.  The truth is, they feel  stifled by
your presence. They feel  they can't lead a  mature life until you  are dead and
gone.'

The words made Harmon  explode. Seldom had he  heard such nonsense, he  said. He
had never tried to  stifle anyone - whereas  his own father had  always tried to
stifle him. They were just inadequate, that was the truth, and were looking  for
excuses. In fact, he was their only hope -their one and only hope.

'What?' Day exclaimed.  'Doesn't religion come  into the picture?  You must have
some religion, surely.'

Harmon ordered her to keep the Sun God out of the argument.

'Now I'm off,' he said, making to go.

'No, please wait, Father,' said Woundrel,  coming forward, laying a hand on  his
father's arm. 'I don't see this matter quite as Via does. There's some truth  in
what she says, but she's only a girl, and things are easier for girls.'

'Don't you believe it!' shrieked Roa. 'Pig!'

But Woundrel was not to be deflected,  and continued to speak in a quiet  voice.
'You see, as long  as you are still  swaggering about, well, Aledref  and Cedred
and I don't - well, we're just sons. I mean, we are no more than sons.'

'You're my sons!' the old man said, proudly.

'That's the problem. We want to be men, not sons.'

'You are men. Pretty feeble men... What are you talking about?' Harmon glared at
his son. 'Why has no one invented psychiatry?'

'What I am trying  to say is that  we shall feel ourselves  to be real men  only
when you have gone from  the Earth. Killing you is  necessary for us to live  as
men, free, mature, in control of our own destinies...'

'In other words, killing you is  a sort of initiation rite,' explained  Aledref.
'Like this!' Raising the  axe above his head,  he brought the blade  down on his
father's shoulder, close to his left ear.

Harmon uttered a cry.  He endeavoured to swing  his staff, but Cedred  rushed in
and sank his  dagger into his  father's stomach. As  Harmon fell backwards,  his
staff went flying through  the air, to fall  some feet away. Roa  seized it, ran
forward, and smashed it against her father's skull.

'Take that for all your wickedness!' she cried.

The three of them, Aledref,  Cedred, and Roa, beat at  the old man as he  rolled
over on to his stomach. He attempted to rise, drawing himself to his knees,  but
they  smashed him  down again  with axe,  dagger and  staff. They  worked  away,
cursing and gasping, long after Harmon's soul had fled into the arms of the  Sun
God.

'Jarl, that's enough,'  cried Aledref, exhausted.  'We're men now,  the three of
us!'  After clasping  Roa's and  Cedred's hands,  he sat  down on  his  father's
crumpled body and wiped the sweat from his brow.

'Don't sit there like that!' cried Roa. 'You'll get all bloody, and then  who'll
have to wash your loin-skirt?'

Coming forward,  Woundrel appealed  to Aledref.  'So, you've  done the  deed. At
least let's have the decency to eat him now.'

'Forget it. What  did he ever  do for us?'  Turning to his  other brother and to
Roa, Aledref clicked his fingers. He rose, pushing Woundrel aside.

Day was  shrieking. 'Horror,  horror!' she  cried. 'And  my family were Baptists
just!'

They  severed their  father's head  and his  genitals, and  buried them  in  the
clearing. From his stomach they pulled  out his intestines and threw the  length
of them into the forest.

Woundrel stood watching the proceedings in silence, pale of face.

Via burst  into tears  and ran  from the  clearing. That  night, preparing their
supper, eyes still blinded by  tears, she accidentally plucked a  poisonous herb
with which to flavour the stew. They all became sick,


When the Sun God next spread his cloth of dawn over the world, all the  children
of Harmon were  lifeless. But from  the buried head  of Harmon grew  the Tree of
Knowledge, and from his  buried genitals two persons  were created, a man  and a
woman. And from the intestines, lying in the forest, a serpent was created.

And the  man and  woman, innocent  in their  nakedness, looked  on the world and
found it good. At least until the serpent turned up.

And so a new myth was born.